Eastertide

Holy Week thoughts

It is cold as a witch’s tit here in Tennessee this morning. It was 85 yesterday. I’m sitting on my porch, though, in the wind, in the blue sky, in vigil over the widow maker hanging on the top of my Hackberry tree threading to fall on the wire and cut off everyone’s internet and power. I should call the city, but instead I’m watching the cardinal couple in their nest hollowed into the holly bush.

I’m thinking of Jesus in the desert for 40 days and nights and Elijah’s fleeing Jezebel for 40 days and nights and how the number 40 seems significant and how the Great Flood lasted 40 days and 40 nights. In Sacred Scripture means transformation and change from one great task to another. I don’t really recall my 40th birthday being of any significance as I was knee deep in denial and drink. We are on our 450th day of the Trump presidency which is surely casting out his demons, as awful as that is.

On Friday, I talked to Wanda Fischer, the programming director at WAMC, an NPR station in Albany. My show at The Linda was sponsored by them and Wanda introduced me. She told me that a few artists have sent music to her which name checks Trump and Vance and she hates it but she cannot play those songs because they will lose funding. I get being brave, like Harvard, but I support Wanda, as WAMC relies on NPR funding and it’s important for her to stay on the air. I’m sending her my version of a Woody song. It’s the least I can do.

When I was a kid, we would go to Holy Thursday Mass, Good Friday services and, of course, Easter Sunday Mass. On Holy Thursday there’s a ceremony of feet washing I always thought was poignant. I like symbolism. Good Friday, we’d walk up in a line and kiss the huge, wooden cross. My mother would do “the stations of the Cross.” This year, I’m going to take Huck to our Good Friday services at my progressive Episcopalian Church. I like the solemnity of that day. When Jesus dies. I wrestle with my beliefs — is it truth he rose from the dead? is it myth? were there miracles? is there such a thing as the Son of God? For now, on the path I am following, I choose to believe. It’s like a phrase my sponsor told me, “Maybe you’re right.” It cuts the argument in half and doesn’t concede. “Maybe the Bible is right, the prophets, my barefoot woman preacher.” Why not? In this awful time, why not choose a freedom myth, one man, dying on a cross for our forgiveness. If Christ can die on a cross for me, I can sustain the cold chill of April and the administration. And teach my son to accept miracles. He still believes in the Easter Bunny and I’m not going to tell him that it’s a lie. I want his wonder to last. It’s why I’m bundled up in the cold on my porch watching the cardinals, wondering at the resurrection of Spring every year.